Fukushima: US Sailors’ Attorney: Fukushima has left an entire generation of young people crippled physically, mentally, and genetically — Nuclear radiation is threatening entire planet…

USS Reagan sailors on deck trying to clean up radiation during Operation Tomadachi, their humanitarian aid mission to Fukushima immediately after the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami. (Note the lack of protective gear.)

Charles Bonner, attorney representing US sailors exposed to Fukushima radioactive releases during Operation Tomodachi: We intend to put the nuclear industry on trial here, because it is the misrepresentation from the nuclear industry that nuclear energy is safe that has allowed this particular incident to occur. There’s this false sense of security that these for-profit energy companies such as Tepco, created in the public. The public believes that these power plants are totally safe; in fact Tepco guaranteed the Japanese public that this particular power plant was safe. […] These nuclear power plants threaten the world, the entire planet is threatened.

Bonner: [Radiation-contaminated water] undoubtedly is going to hit the northern coast of California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska — probably by the end of this year or the beginning of next year. This kind of contamination threatens the entire planet and it has left an entire generation of young people now crippled, genetically as well as mentally, as well physically. As you well know radiation doesn’t just affect the person, it causes genetic mutations so it affects the offspring of an irradiated person. So the harm and damage here to the human beings is far reaching, let alone considering the damage to the environment which is ongoing. Tepco is still releasing 300 tons of radiation-contaminated water every day and it’s been going on every day, as it is stated in the lawsuit, since March 11, 2011 — since the earthquake happened. This is a very serious problem. So yes, this lawsuit indicts not only Tepco, but indicts the entire nuclear industry and it requires that citizens of the world demand that these power plants actually be shut down because it is impossible to make them completely safe.

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The headline qua lead-in for this post is as bad as the worst yellow journalism that ever graced the Victorian era. Using the hyperbole and rhetoric of an ambitious defense attorney as alarum (that’s latin for “red flag”) will undermine the real, fully fleshed out stories that must follow on real events and “facts on the ground”. How do we get from the “talked about” projection that radioactively contaminated ocean currents will reach our west coast by this fall, to a statement that an entire generation of young people are crippled? What does need to happen is relentless, as in inexorable, pressure on the responsibles in our government to take all steps feasible to protect and warn, and to phase out nuclear power. There may be a laundry list of other revolutionary goodies that must occur to wipe consumerism out of the motivational agenda of the hapless masses. The website “Nuclear Hotseat” may have good telegraphic info, but reads like “chicken little sky is falling” gossip.

On the other hand, maybe a martial arts feint (like the Hotseat site) delivered to the blithering public WOULD be a good move. Freak their jesus right out of their small town comfort. Pray for rain? Pray for nuclear salvation?

“What does need to happen is relentless, as in inexorable, pressure on the responsibles in our government to take all steps feasible to protect and warn, and to phase out nuclear power.”

“Responsibles”? As in people not abusing their power and acting responsibly? It would be nice to have some of these. We used to. The war on moral restraint, unfortunately, has made them all but extinct. Don’t think we will see very many responsibles. Countless examples have been put up as object lessons for the would be responsible. Wellstone, Kuchich, McKinney, a bunch of Kennedys, and many more are such examples for would be responsibles to consider.

Don’t want to hang up on semantics, but my use of the term ” responsibles” clearly means, in the context, “those who are (or will be) held responsible (for consequences of inaction). To hammer the point, those in positions of responsibility are accountable for whatever happens. Not a case of lecturing high school students on how they must act “responsibly”. In that sense, for sure, no one in our world seems to be.

You take away politics, take away whether you think trickle-down [economics] works, take away even what you think about race. Just look at this community. Are the families healthy and thriving? No? Okay. It's not resilient.

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Small is beautiful, when small is skilled and dedicated. ~Gene Logsdon→

I've observed that people tend to live at one of two extremes in the spectrum of life: those who live on the edge, and those who avoid the edge. Those who live on the edge are hanging out in the most dangerous and unstable places — yet they're also often the most powerful agents of change, because the edge is where change is happening; away from the edge, things are naturally unchanging. ~Thom Hartmann

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume. ~Noam Chomsky

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Local Organic Family Farms

THE SMALL ORGANIC FARM greatly discomforts the corporate/ industrial mind because the small organic farm is one of the most relentlessly subversive forces on the planet. Over centuries both the communist and the capitalist systems have tried to destroy small farms because small farmers are a threat to the consolidation of absolute power.

Thomas Jefferson said he didn’t think we could have democracy unless at least 20% of the population was self-supporting on small farms so they were independent enough to be able to tell an oppressive government to stuff it.

It is very difficult to control people who can create products without purchasing inputs from the system, who can market their products directly thus avoiding the involvement of mercenary middlemen, who can butcher animals and preserve foods without reliance on industrial conglomerates, and who can’t be bullied because they can feed their own faces. ~Eliot Coleman